1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air-processing installation, designed for the ventilation and air-conditioning of several rooms and to an air-processing module designed for the making of an installation of this type.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, when it is desired to ventilate and air-condition several rooms, there is a choice between two types of installation.
A first type of installation has a single air-processing plant which is housed in an engine room and provides supply, in parallel, to air blowing openings placed in the different rooms through a system of branching conduits. The single air-processing plant, which is partially supplied with fresh air, also recovers in air from each room through another system of branching conduits ending in air suction openings placed in the different rooms.
The disadvantage of a known installation of this type is that it is very difficult and even impossible to adapt the ventilation and air-conditioning to the specific needs of each room. Thus, for example, it is practically impossible to find a setting of the air-conditioning plant which will give the ventilation and air-conditioning needed for a sick room, an office and a computer room which, however, may be adjacent rooms.
Furthermore, a known installation of this type implies a mixing of the stale air coming from the different rooms and then a re-introduction of this mixed air (mixed, it is true, with fresh air) into the different rooms. In other words, the air taken from one room is then distributed among the other rooms, and if this air is charged with fumes, microbes or viruses, these fumes, microbes or viruses are distributed in the other rooms to the detriment of the comfort and health of their occupants.
Finally, a known installation of this type has the disadvantage of requiring the installation of a complex system of branching conduits implying the presence of numerous connections and variations in diameter as well as difficulties related to intersection with other systems such as systems for water, gas and electrical supply, and the disadvantage entailed by the fact that any breakdown or maintenance operation in the air-processing plant might cause an interruption in ventilation and air-conditioning in all the rooms concerned.
An installation of the second type copes with these drawbacks inasmuch as, in this installation, each room has its own convection fan which takes air only from this room, apart from a supply of fresh air, and blows air only into this room. This approach is a hygienic one and can be adjusted with great flexibility to the specific ventilation and air-conditioning needs of the room considered. Furthermore, it enables doing necessarily means that it must be placed on the outside wall of the building, which partly limits possibilities of layout and practically rules out the possibility of setting it up in rooms that do not adjoin an outside wall. Furthermore, inasmuch as for each room, there is a corresponding a fresh air tap, it spoils the general aesthetic quality of buildings fitted with it and limits the possibilities of choice as regards this aesthetic appearance. Furthermore, an individual supply of each convection fan with fresh air through a fresh air tap on the outside wall prevents any effective control over the flowrate of fresh air given by the convection fans since this flowrate is closely related to atmospheric conditions and, more precisely, to wind. To cope with these disadvantages, this individual supply of fresh air to each convection fan is sometimes replaced by a supply to the various rooms from an air-processing plant connected to these various rooms by a system of conduits, with regulation of flowrate and temperature of this fresh air. In this case, however, several disadvantages indicated earlier for an installation of the first type, reappear.
Furthermore, when the desired temperature setting of the air travelling through each convection fan of an installation of the second type implies a thermal exchange with a heat-exchanging fluid, as is usual with convection fans used for cooling air and as is frequent with convection fans used for heating air, it is necessary to provide for a complicated and expensive system for the supply of heat-exchanging fluid, which is difficult to maintain. And moreover, a condensate discharging system is needed for reasons of hygiene, and has the same disadvantages.
Finally, the second type of installation requires maintenance personnel to take action in each room under conditions that are often uncomfortable whether the convection fan is placed on a shoulder or in a false ceiling. Sometimes, even the maintenance operations can make the room unusable for a time, as is the case for certain hospital rooms. This is also true for possible leakages of heat-exchanging fluid or condensates which may furthermore cause damage to equipment in the rooms in which they occur.